Growing Minds & Settled Hearts

Introduction

Nearly three years ago, I told the story of Charles Blondin, a 19th century Frenchman who walked from one side of Niagara Falls to the other on a tightrope, without a net to catch him if he fell. He would go across the tightrope many times over many months, each time doing something new. There was a time that he laid down upon the rope and arose walking backwards to the other side. At one point, he took a table and chairs to set up in the middle of the rope, however as he attempted to sit in the chair it fell to its watery grave. Blondin almost did as well, but he ended up getting his balance and sat down on the rope, ate some cake and drank some champaign. Once he took a stove to the middle of the rope, lit a fire, and cooked an omelette, then lowed it in the pan to some observers on the Maiden of the Mist. The story I told a few years ago was about him taking a wheelbarrow across the rope to the other side. At one point he asked if anyone wanted to get in and have him take them across. No one did. In fact, he often offered, but in all his times crossing the Niagara, no one ever wanted to get into the wheelbarrow. However, there was a time when his manager Harry Colcord, hopped on his back for a ride across the Falls. With Colcord on his back, Blondin said to him, “Look up, Harry.… you are no longer Colcord, you are Blondin. Until I clear this place be a part of me, mind, body, and soul. If I sway, sway with me. Do not attempt to do any balancing yourself. If you do we will both go to our death.”

Brothers and sisters, Blondin’s instructions to his manager are so similar to Paul’s instructions to us. Colcord could no longer be Colcord. He had to be Blondin—mind, body, and soul until the mission was over. Imagine the trust and submission it must have taken for Colcord not to try and keep his own balance. It is ingrained within us to do so. The will had to be convinced of what Blondin said. The soul of Concord had to have all its hope in this tightrope walker. It had to believe in Blondin’s power to get him to their destination. He, himself, was powerless to do so. And so it is with us.

Paul’s prayer for his readers, which includes us, is that we’d have the experience with God that Colcord had with Blondin—that we’d have growing minds and settled hearts.

As we study this portion of his letter this morning, my hope is that Paul’s prayer would once again be answered in each of us. Yes, that what Paul prayed would happen so long ago would be answered in 2025 at Highland View Baptist Church—that we’d have growing minds and settled hearts.

Paul’s Prayer is that We’d Have Growing Minds

So let’s take a look at Paul’s prayer that our minds would grow. Like Colcord who watched Blondin’s character manifest itself, and having seen him traverse the Niagara over and over again, each time growing in his understanding of what Blondin was doing and who he was in his skills, so we are to grow in our knowledge of God. In order where Paul is coming from, we need to first understand what prompts him to pray.

Notice in verse 15 that Paul wrote, “For this reason,”

Ephesians 1:15 ESV

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints,

Here he has given the prompts for his prayer; there are two of them. The first is all that Paul has written until now. In other words, the one long sentence that makes up Ephesians 1:1-14 is the first occasion that prompts Paul into prayer. It’s obvious that Paul knows all too well the doctrines of which he has been writing. The readers of his letter may not be nearly as well-informed. Remember that many of his readers were not Jews who had the Scriptures, what we’d call the Old Testament. Most had been Greek pagans who had believed in the pantheon of gods that were told in myths. Remember what Luke wrote about the people in Ephesus?

Acts 19:18–19 ESV

Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.

Remember that this was the city of the goddess Artemis, her Roman name being Diana. You may recall that the temple of Diana here in Ephesus was one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. This culture would have known nothing about God as a Father, nothing about Jesus as brother, and nothing about the Spirit as comforter. They would have believed in the Fates, which are not the same as the predestination of God. Thus, while there was a true conversion of the soul, the mind still had so much growing to do. Being able to leave the past in the past, all that you’ve known and grown up with, all that you have practiced and experienced, all that you have believed and accepted was being overcome by the Spirit of God. But there is always some wrestling that takes place. It’s easy to slip back into old ways of thinking. So Paul says, knowing all that I know and all that I’ve presented to you so far in this letter, I want you to grow in your mind.

But the second prompting for his prayer is simply the fact that these readers had become Christ-followers and saint-lovers. The two go hand-in-hand. They cannot be separated. Faith that is founded in Christ will be expressed in love for fellow-believers. Again, notice that Paul calls these fellow-believers saints—holy ones. That is their identity. How? Because they too are with you and me in the Beloved, along with our faith.

That’s important to understand. Our faith is not simply in Christ; it is in Christ. Imagine for a moment that you are standing outside on a nice spring day in Missouri. It’s nice and warm—maybe a little too warm—and windy—maybe a little too windy. Suddenly, you hear tornado sirens going off in the distance and your phone shrieks to you that you are in the path of an oncoming tornado. You have been told that a rich benefactor has built a storm shelter not too far from where you are. You’ve heard about the shelter. It’s been described in detail. You’ve heard about the rich man who built it; he seems really nice. You believe in the rich man and the shelter; it all makes logical sense. You believe in the rich man’s goodness, his wealth, even his ability to make the storm shelter secure. But believing in the rich man and the shelter will not protect you from the coming tornado. You faith in the man and the shelter are nothing unless your faith (and you) are in the shelter.

The love for the saints is a natural and even a supernatural act that comes from being in Christ. It is natural because there is a natural bond that happens between people who encounter harrowing and extreme situations together. But supernatural because each of us are so diverse in our past experiences and beliefs that each of us need a change of heart to love each other deeply. Remember that it was in Ephesus that members of the church were brought into an assembly by rioters. The leaders of the synagogues were haters of Paul and the church. Some of those outsiders, no doubt, had come to faith themselves and entered into the body of Christ. How could someone who had seen such evil love those who had at one point perpetrated it? Only by God’s supernatural work in their hearts.

So Paul says that what prompts him to pray is both all he had written about their being in Christ—predestined, loved, adopted, receiving every spiritual blessing, having redemption, having hope, having an inheritance, the gospel, and so so much more in Christ, and that they were already saved and had a love for the saints. But we all know what happens when we have a zeal without knowledge, don’t we? We all know what happens when we love, but not according to truth.

So we read his prayer:

Ephesians 1:16–17 ESV

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him,

Paul, thankful for what God has already done with and in his readers, prays that God would cause their minds to grow. But before we get to that, let’s take a look at how he describes God. We now leave behind what prompted Paul to pray and look at the Person to whom he prayed.

He calls him the Father of glory. Now the translators translated this quite literally, and from my understanding did so because it is consistent and in cadence with God of our Lord Jesus Christ. But “Father of glory” is what we’d call a Hebraism. Paul’s Hebrew background is coming out here. Rather than being translated literally, we should understand it Hebraically: “Our glorious Father.” It is not so much that he is the source of all things glorious, but that he is himself glorious. His character, his nature is glorious. His Fatherhood is glorious! But not just his fatherhood; everything about God radiates his glory because he is glorious. His mercy, his grace, his justice, his power, everything about him is glorious! Thus Paul is praying to the glorious Father because in praying to the glorious Father, we grow in our knowledge of his glory; we see it, we feel it, we are transformed by it!

Paul asks our glorious Father to bestow upon his readers a spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowledge of him; thus, the petition that Paul prays. Paul desires, and so prays, that we would grow in our knowledge of our glorious Father. The translators have capitalized the word Spirit and it is understandable why they did so. I don’t believe, however, Paul was talking about the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of our minds. Certainly the spirit of our minds is influenced by the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit has already been given to us as Pastor Drew pointed out last week when preaching about verse 14. The prayer is that the Holy Spirit then is not only within us to be a down payment of our inheritance, but to be he who grows the spirit of our own minds so that we continuously grow in wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God.

Remember that the Ephesians are brand new believers. Remember their pagan backgrounds that they are so easily influenced by. Remember that it’s easier to take the boy out of the city, but not so easy to take the city out of the boy. So Paul prays that the Spirit would interact with their spirits (our spirits) so that we continually grow in our wisdom and revelation, explained by the words “in the knowledge of him.” Paul had already revealed one mystery to the Ephesians in verse 9. They needed the Spirit to keep that knowledge growing.

Brothers and sisters, may Paul’s prayer be answered here at Highland View. May we never become a people content with our limited knowledge of our glorious Father! We have a Father with infinite power, knowledge, riches. One of the great aspects of heaven is that we will always be growing in our knowledge of his wisdom and revelation. Paul’s prayer is that we wouldn’t wait for eternity; but that God’s Spirit would work on our spirit now.

So let me ask you, how will you grow in wisdom and revelation of God this week? Reading the Bible and prayer are great. We should be doing that. Scripture memory and mediation are fantastic; we should do those things as well. But if we are doing them so we can get through our reading plan or for pride’s sake and our minds are not engaged to know our glorious Father more, what good is that? Let me challenge you before you read, meditate, or memorize to pray Psalm 119:18

Psalm 119:18 ESV

Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

Our glorious Father has wondrous things in his instruction if we will listen. And then let us remember what James said,

James 1:23–25 ESV

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

And then afterwards, share your revelation, your wisdom with someone else in the church. Text him, call her, meet for coffee, or what have you. Paul’s letter wasn’t just to one person, but a prayer for the whole church; help your brothers and sisters to grow their minds as well.

A Settled Heart

That’s the first part of Paul’s prayer: that we’d have growing minds; the second part is that we’d have settled hearts. This in some ways is the exact opposite of the growing mind. The mind should continue to grow in the knowledge of God as God is a glorious and infinite Father. We cannot cease to learn about God. But our hearts should be settled when it comes to certain truths and promises that God has made. We ought not vacillate. We ought not wonder. We ought not doubt. Not vacillate on what? Not wonder about what? Not doubt what? Paul tells us three truths that we must settle in our hearts. Like Colcord, we must settle it in our hearts that we are in Christ. When he sways, we sway with him. We don’t try to balance ourselves; we go with him and in him.

Ephesians 1:18–19 ESV

having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might

Did you catch what the three are?

We must settle in our hearts

the hope of his calling

the riches of our glorious inheritance

the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us.

Where does this take place? In our hearts. Paul prays that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened. He prays that our hearts would see clearly these three truths. And he uses the word “know.” Paul used two different Greek words when speaking about knowledge, and he did so back to back. Verse 17, he says that he is praying that his readers would grow in the knowledge of God, and then in 18 that we may know what is the hope, the riches, and the greatness. In Greek, those are two different words. Gnosis is the word that we probably are familiar with the most. We get words like diagnosis or agnostic from this word. In Paul’s day, this word had a sense of knowledge that was experiential and growing. Hence, I say that Paul prayed for a growing mind. He wants us to have gnosis—an ever growing, experiential knowledge of God. But the other word—that you may know—comes from the word “oida.” We don’t have any words that derive directly from this word. This, however, indicates a settled knowledge. This is experiential, but it isn’t expanding. It’s concrete. Two plus two is four. We all know that. It’s settled knowledge. In fact, we know it by heart!

Paul’s prayer is that we also know the hope of his calling by heart. What is that hope?

We see it in verse 4: that we will be holy and blameless before him. That’s settled. We don’t need to vacillate on whether or not God has the ability, the love, the patience, or the willingness to make us holy and blameless.

We see it in verse 10: that we will be united with all things in the fulness of time. All that has gone wrong, is going wrong, and will go wrong, is being summed up—brought together and redeemed, and that includes us. All our brokenness, our minds, our hearts, our spirits, our bodies, our relationships, and whatever else might be broken about us will be united under the headship of Christ and all will be made right. That’s a settled fact. No need to wonder if it will be true.

But if we really wanted to narrow this down to one main idea, we find it in verse 12: our hope is in Christ. As the song says, “Christ our hope in life and death.” That’s settled. No need to doubt it. Our hope is not simply future. It is now. And it is not even an it, but a man: Christ himself. We are in Him.

But it’s not only the hope of his calling that is a settled fact. It is also the riches of our glorious inheritance. Not only is our Father glorious, but so is our inheritance! And again, this inheritance is not simply future, though there is one, but this inheritance is now—in and among the saints. You may be sitting there scratching your head, asking where? Maybe you’ve already forgotten verse 7.

Ephesians 1:7 ESV

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,

Forgiveness is ours now. We need not wonder if it is so. We have been given it now and it lasts until forever! God lavishes it upon us. Or maybe you’ve forgotten verse 11 in which Paul wrote that we have obtained (already obtained) this inheritance. Certainly all the glories of heaven will be ours, but also the promise that God is working everything out according to his plan. Or perhaps we’ve missed verses 13 and 14.

Ephesians 1:13–14 ESV

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

The Holy Spirit is our down-payment of this inheritance. That’s some down-payment! We need not vacillate if this is true or not. Paul wants this settled in our hearts.

But finally, there is also the issue of power that needs to be settled. We need to settle into our hearts the fact that there is an immeasurable greatness in God’s power toward us. We will deal more about this next week, but let me just state the obvious: immeasurable means that neither its quantity nor its quality can be measured—fully known—by us mere mortals. But what we can know is that there is no one with greater power. Satan had the power to kill Jesus, but he did not have enough power to keep him dead.

Beloved, these three truths need to be settled in every single one of your hearts. They are not up for debate. They are not up for questioning. These are the promises of God that are in Christ. Since we are in Christ, these promises are ours. So when you wonder about whether or not God could forgive your sinful past, look at what you’ve settled in your heart. God has promised in Christ to present you before him holy and blameless, so you can say, “What sin?” In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin; the Holy Spirit is our down-payment guaranteeing us a home in heaven.

Romans 8:33–34 ESV

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

When you wonder about being strong enough to overcome temptation and sin, look to the settled truth in your heart. It is not that you have power in your own strength to battle against the rulers and authorities and the cosmic powers of darkness. But the settled promise that you have the immeasurable greatness of his power toward you. Many of us have something different settled in our hearts that needs a jackhammer taken to it. It’s more akin to “I’m trapped in this sin. I’m never going to overcome.” Paul says, “No what must be settled in your hearts is that you have the immeasurable greatness of God’s power within you.

Conclusion

As we close out these few verses of Ephesians we’ve dealt with so much! First we’ve seen that Paul’s prayer was for his readers to have growing minds when it comes to the knowledge of God. Thus, everyone of us is to be a perpetual theologian. But we’ve also seen that Paul’s prayer was for his readers to have settled hearts when it comes to the hope of his calling, the riches of our inheritance, and the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us. No wonder Paul wrote that he was a glorious Father! Everything that is Christ’s is ours! In a sense, even more so, because Christ did not need to be redeemed; he did the redeeming. So in that sense, we even receive a redemption at Christ’s expense!

There may be some here who are like that person I mentioned earlier. The tornado siren has sounded and the phone is shrieking. You’ve heard and know and even believe in the storm shelter, but you’re faith is not actually in the shelter. In fact, some of you may be like us brave Midwesterners who hear the sirens go off and go outside looking to see if all the commotion is true. You’re waiting for proof of the coming judgment. You’ve heard the sirens and shrieks so many times and nothing has ever happened that you think they’re false alarms. I assure you they are not. It’s time not only to believe in the benefactor and the building. It’s time to be in the building the benefactor has offered at no expense to you.

For we who are in Christ, we have so many reasons to praise him. He has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places: a redemption, an inheritance, and an immeasurable power, among 10,000 other blessings.

Prayer

Our heavenly Father,

Let us not be conformed to this world, but may we be transformed by the continual renewal of our minds. Give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of you. Settle our hearts with the truths regarding the hope of your calling upon us, the riches of the inheritance you’re giving us, and the immeasurable power you have put in us. Thus may we live day by day ever growing and always settled. In Jesus’s name. Amen.

Three ways to respond:

Singing praise to our God.

Giving an offering of thanks to our God.

If a baptized believer, not under discipline, taking of the elements that we may eat and drink of them together.